The perpetual reinvention of reality proceeds apace, as neocons who once gave
expression to the Bush administration’s most extreme rhetoric now pose
as "moderates," – and these same neocons insist the Iraq war was
a great success after all. They point to the recent Iraqi elections as proof
of their redemption – even as their former pet, Ahmed Chalabi, rises from the
political graveyard to become Iran’s chief spokesman and agent. It’s one of
the richest, and perhaps most revealing, of the many ironies generated by the
invasion of Iraq that the Che Guevara of the neocons has morphed into the handmaiden of the mullahs.

As tempting as it might be to elaborate on this theme, it would be a diversion
from what is really the main news coming out of the election, and that is the
political reincarnation of Iyad "the Executioner" Allawi. A former
top Ba’athist official who fled in the early seventies, he didn’t resign from
the party until 1975. He claims to have quit due to the increasing dominance
of Saddam Hussein, but Hussein didn’t take complete power until President Al-Bakr
resigned in 1979.

News stories reporting Allawi’s come-from-behind narrow victory over the parties
aligned with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki invariably describe him as "secular,"
which really only means godless. Reuters hails Allawi as the personification
of "hope for secular Iraq," and yet the Ba’athist party was also
secular, and "cross-sectarian," as reporter Paul McGeough puts it,
and that doesn’t make him one of the good guys, as the
following from the Sydney Morning Herald makes all too clear:

"Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and
executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just
days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government,
according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

"They say the prisoners – handcuffed and blindfolded – were lined
up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block
in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center, in the city’s southwestern
suburbs.

"They say Dr. Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as
many as 50 Iraqis and they ‘deserved worse than death.’ The … informants told
the Herald that Dr. Allawi shot each young man in the head as about
a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister’s personal
security team watched in stunned silence."

It was a "secular" execution, embodying all the ruthlessness of
a Saddam Hussein, which bothers our CIA not at all: he’s their boy, and has
been since his defection. Allawi was a principal figure, second only to Chalabi,
in the network of Iraqi exiles who did so much to lie us into war. It was his
group, the Iraqi National
Accord, that funneled "intelligence" which gave Tony Blair
the idea Saddam could launch his "weapons of mass destruction" on
45 minutes notice.

Allawi’s role as an instrument of US foreign policy goes way back. A 1996
CIA-backed plan to overthrow Saddam and install Allawi in his place turned
into the Middle Eastern version of the Bay of Pigs: Iraqi intelligence had
planted agents inside the ranks of the dissident Ba’athist officers who formed
the core of Allawi’s support.

Allawi served as the Iraqi face of the occupation during the reign of Paul
Bremer, first as puppet "defense minister" and then Prime Minister.
It was only a few days before the occupation forces officially handed Allawi
the keys to his new kingdom that the execution of the six prisoners took place.
It was said at the time that this helped Allawi in Iraq, as it proved he had
the sort of ruthlessness required to maintain a strong Iraqi central state.

Today the same centrifugal forces that threatened to rip apart the country
in the wake of Saddam’s defeat are stretching the national fabric to the breaking
point: the country has become a battlefield between the US and Iran, in a war
that hasn’t quite yet reached the shooting stage. With the Iranians backing
Maliki, there can be little doubt the Americans provided the Allawi forces
with substantial aid, as they have
in the past.

The Iranian-backed Maliki government – whose installation, in another one
of those dark ironies of the invasion, was due to US force of arms – has done
everything it can to neutralize the Allawi coalition’s razor-thin margin of
victory, such as arresting successful candidates, etc. However, the Allawi-ites
are no angels, as their leader’s personal history illustrates. In the end,
one has to ask: is this what all those people died for – so that a thug
not
named Saddam Hussein could place his boot on the throats of the Iraqi people?

"His strongest virtue is that he’s a thug" says
neocon (and ex-CIA analyst) Reuel Marc Gerecht, and Obama’s CIA apparently
agrees. If Gerecht and his friends had had their way, Iraq would have been
handed over to Chalabi long ago, but Allawi will do. This way both the neocons
and the Obama-ites can claim the "credit" for yet another US "victory"
– one that old King
Pyrrhus would surely recognize.

"His strongest virtue is that he's a thug." Oh my God! If that's where his virtue lies, I sure don't want to find out about his vices! On the other hand, a "neo-con" who has an outright admiration for a thug.. who would have thought it?

Debbie(aussie)

is this what all those people died for – so that a thug not named Saddam Hussein could place his boot on the throats of the Iraqi people? Absolutely YES!
Anyone that will do what the Us wants is the next best thing. Thug is probably a prerequisite tho.

Wolfgang

Isn't that the guy what American's really mean when they talk about bringing Democracy to other countries?
W

Mr. Raimondo, I think there is one prominent flaw in this article. You claim that the Maliki administration is backed by the Iranian regime, but that is simply not the case. In this presidential election, Iran backed an alliance of Al Sadr's faction and the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), whose leader died a few months ago. Interestingly, the latter group was about two years ago aligned with the Maliki administration and at war with Al Sadr's militia.

Iran has generally taken a two-track approach in Iraq. First, support groups that will support fundamentalist Shiites in Iraq. This generally includes SIIC and Al Sadr. Second, support groups that will support Iran's interests in Iraq. It is this little roadblock that complicates the Shiite side of Iraqi politics. Iran generally stands back and supports whichever Shiite group will support its interests, and so it has been closer to Al Sadr or the SIIC at different times (although Iran has often tacked closer to the SIIC, which it helped found) and let both groups jockey for primacy.

Guestguest

Allawi, is a fat, thug/stooge, with a need to be white, a Neo-NAZI-con who sucked up to Boooooooshie, bunnypants, another 'poodle' just like Uribe, Sarkosy, and the legions of thugs who operate under the scum at the top. A $$$$ man without a clue! Empire always needs to spred 'secularism' so that they can displace the unwanted riff-raff called 'people'/slaves from their own 'natural resources' and make them as stupid as Booooooooshie. Wonder if it was Barbra's precious brain that needed emergency treatment.

>>[Iraqi National Accord] … gave Tony Blair the idea Saddam could launch his "weapons of mass destruction" on 45 minutes notice.

Apparently not? According to the Guardian of 8 December 2009 the 45 minutes claim had the following provenance:

"Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist who is now a member of the Commons defence committee, made his comments in a report he has written claiming that MI6 always had reservations about some of the information in the dossier but that these reservations were brushed aside when Downing Street was preparing it for publication.

In the report he wrote: "Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, British intelligence was squeezing their agents in Iraq for information. One agent did come up with something: the '45 minutes' or something about missiles allegedly discussed in a high level Iraqi political meeting.

"But the provenance of this information was never questioned in detail until after the Iraq invasion, when it became apparent that something was wrong. In the end it turned out that the information was not credible, it had originated from an émigré taxi driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, who had remembered an overheard a conversation in the back of his cab a full two years earlier."

Did anyone mention that Allawi used to run bombing campaigns on the streets of Baghdad while Saddam was in power? He used to kill innocent civilians with the full backing of the CIA, in the hope of stirring up social turmoil. Then we all wonder who blew up the Samarra mosque… So it goes…

5 thousand dead Americans, 40 thousand wounded, Millions of Iraqi's killed and wounded, trilions of dollars wasted all so Iraq can be turned over to the Shia friends of Iran. What a great bunch of leaders we have in this country.

Henry_Clemens

Justin's article was very interesting but I must admit that I really don't give one damn about who rules Iraq, or any other country for that matter. What I really care about is who or what is in charge of America. The real untold truth is this: the federal government of America has been taken over by a Washington-Wall Street Mafia. The Democrats and Republicans in the Congress are nothing more than Wall Street’s economic bag men. It is the Wall Street military-industrial corporations, the Wall Street banking corporations and the Wall Street homeland security corporations that are systematically looting the American people, systematically destroying our liberties, and systematically turning the entire country into one gigantic police state. It is Wall Street and their congressional wise guys who are bankrupting America with endless war; bankrupting America with gigantic military, homeland security and intelligence spending; bankrupting America with enormous bank bailout thefts, and bankrupting America with astronomical deficits – all of which will eventually destroy the value of the dollar and that will directly lead to the complete destruction of what is left of our already shattered economy.

Henry_Clemens

Please, Justin, stop attacking the foreign branches of the problem. Attack the domestic root of the problem while there is still a slim chance to save the American people from utter ruin. Our real enemy is the Washington-Wall Street Mafia, not some perceived enemy or enemies half a world away.

carl

It's worth pointing out that Allawi happily gave the green light for US troops to rape Fallujah in 2004. He's a slutty version of Saddam. His performance at the polls was striking, given his weak showing in the last election. He's our man, and that's not likely to be forgotten by Iraqis as US influence wanes. The best hope the US has of controlling Iraq is someone like Allawi — someone so hated by Iraqis that he will be dependent on US back up when his own efforts at bloody repression are insufficient. He'll be more than permitted to use the helicopters. We'll provide them, along with the poison gas and the Whiskey Pete.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].